Mark:

agree with your sentiments, but not sure they will make much difference. Most Australians that get active on this issue have a fixed opinion based on well meaning but only partially complete experiences and frameworks. The quest for 'light over dark', 'good over evil' etc has been juxtaposed too cleverly by Dark Green activists since the 1970's. Imagery of forests being destroyed and never growing back have been firmly cemented in the Australian psychy through folklore, songs (John Williamson etc), images and cartoons and strategic advertising by vested interest groups.

I believe it is all a cycle and eventually once logging in Australian native forests is completely stopped - and once logging in SE Asian forests is finished through over-exploitation for cheap replacement imports (that groups like Get Up totally ignore) - people will again start realising that forests must be managed for multiple values and that 'locking up' or 'preservation' is a ridiculous and human centric ideal that really has no practical way of being achieved.

The responses to your thread (and previous similar posts) show that Australian 'environmental' groups in the main really are more about politics that science and exploit the basic (and well meaning) motivations of people who have not always had the benefit of seeing the global picture...eg from the perspective of a Dayak indian in Borneo, so called protection of Australian native forests is an absolute disaster.

By the way Rumplestiltskin you should not be so mean to poor Sarnian. You are a very naughty boy and need to be punished.

Naughty Forestry Tasmania. Naughty Gunns. Naughty Mark Poynter. Naughty foresters. All need a good smack over the knuckles and a good hard look at themselves for being such naughty boys.

Maybe all of the above could try holding hands and singing songs for atonement. That seems to be the course of action Greg LeStrange and Kim Booth are taking now. Very good boys those two.

Nervous Nellie
Just wondering what kind of punishment you are thinking of dishing out to me. Maybe you could cut off my supply of paper and timber products from countries with poor forest practices and replace it with Australian products from well managed forests. This would be a win win situation as you would get to punish me, and the Orangutans, the Tapirs, the capybaras and the Lemirs will get to keep their homes.

There is an environmental purposes exemption from the prohibition on secondary party boycotts (eg the campaign against Harvey Norman). However, strictly the the exemption the conduct of such a campaign should be based on facts.

ENGOs are, despite their not for profit status, trading businesses with multi-million dollar turnover. One day the ACCC will wake up to what is going on and it will start pursuing the ENGOs who are engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct in relation to the campaigns they run. I look forward to seeing some of the possible remedies that may follow - such as a full page 'we were wrong' retractions in national newspapers.

It is about time that ENGOs are exposed to closer scrutiny of the claims they make.